Recommendations for hip-hop without braggadocio (or these other tropes)?

rakim talking about how dope he is at rapping is one of the greatest things that ever happened to the english language

I can take a phrase that's barely heard
Flip it
The success of what I did is up to you to decide and I'm no better than you

Here you go Melomane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194

rejecting anything that mentions weed offhand even if fits the other dubious requirements here is just ridiculous. listen to something else

rolling down the street
without indo
smoking weed makes me puke

Complaining about rappers rapping about rapping is like complaining about rockers singing about rocking.

As far as dealing with a negative self-image goes, Root Manuva's track "Crying" is a much better example of what I’m looking for, inasmuch as that track's lyrics are abstracted from the musical genre in which they are performed.

― Melomane, Saturday, May 30, 2020 7:36 PM (yesterday)

I'd never heard this song before. Now that I have, I'm pretty confused about what you're looking for, or rather what you're finding wanting in the rap you have heard. How are these lyrics "abstracted from" rap? They're like a quarter-step from "don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge."

I was going to suggest Shabazz Palaces, but I'm sure that fails the remorseless precision of the keyword test too. Maybe you should just listen to beat tapes

For Those About to Rap…

I was going to mention Shabazz Palaces as well, but Black Up is just such an off-putting title, you know?

maybe OP just wants emo-rap, with a side-order of kosmische

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVhIA-YH-7w

^^^full disclosure: my third-favourite song of the 00's, as proven by ILM poll science

wanting to consume an idea of a genre that is very specifically deracinated from its cultural birthplace but imagining that it is in some inexplicable way "part of" that genre is, at best reading, a fool's errand, and on most readings more than a little o_O

This times a hundred. Spit it, NV!

chill lofi beats to study to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEHc4u-1QIk

Counter-trolling aside, we've given you a lot of straight answers, Melomane, so it is only meet and right that you should personally respond to each one of them.

is this Raccoon Tanuki's emo cousin

My question in the OP was completely sincere and I am on the outlook for new music, so rest assured that I am following up on every recommendation even to me here (except the obviously facetious ones like Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan). I don't think it necessary to mention every case where a given recommendation does not match what I'm looking for. As we can see from this thread, people are likely to take that lack of interest on my part as a value judgement, and be offended that certain art which connects with them does not connect with me.

Noodle Vague, seeking out music that is in some way culturally deracinated from its origins would not, as I have said, be controversial in many other genres. People ask for prog rock and Nordic jazz recommendations all the time. If my question about hip-hop offends so many here, that must be due to contemporary social concerns and the way people tie hip-hop as a genre to them.

For anyone who grew up under socialism (pomenitul would probably understand if he came of age aesthetically before 1989), the position taken by others here is disquieting. I thought that we were finally finished with the insistence that art must deal with the problems of struggling people, and if you seek art that is abstract, then that must mean that you are prejudiced against workers etc. and cruelly ignore their problems. But there will always be people whose tastes in art run to abstraction, and that does not mean approval of oppression.

yes, it is in fact you who are being oppressed, a disquieting scene here for sure

"i want to listen to rap that isn't rap"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsqXHg9vmjs

pomenitul would probably understand if he came of age aesthetically before 1989

I actually agree with you for the most part and my own aesthetic preferences tend towards l'art pour l'art (I think I've made that fairly obvious over the years), in no small part because I am well aware of the ravages of so-called 'socialist realism'. But 'tends' implies some amount of tension, so to speak, which I think raises a set of difficult questions that deserve our attention, starting with one you've yet to answer: what does it mean to paint a value judgement about art as a merely 'subjective' preference? I don't believe works of art exist to 'deal with the problems of struggling people' at all, but I do question why you would leave the type of art that does to others because it doesn't suit your 'tastes'? Is aesthetic taste an unquestionable datum, something that ought to remain unexamined, ohne Warum or 'just because'?

Not sure what the problem is with braggadocio anyway tbh. Anyway, lyrics? In one ear and out the other.

It's uncivilized.

I want to listen to heavy metal music that is only about parking meters

true abstraction is when you just pay no attention to the words

i don't think that goes far enough, i like to self-administer ECT until my brain stops falling into recognising the stale old tropes of tonal music, rhythm, and what i'm supposed to be doing

Tbf an aural Voynich manuscript of hip-hop would be pretty awesome.

plenty of genres and subgenres started out of not hearing the things you want in music that's around.

Thought of OP when I read an instrument review today....

I learned a LOT being a first time music maker/instrument user/midi etc I have NEVER done anything with music up until this year. Turned 30 and said "I'm TIRED of listening to these trash A** BEATS!!!" so I bought a Komplete Kontrol M32 Keyboard, a DeepMind 6 and an MPC Touch. Haven't used the DM6 yet but OMG I am already a legend in my mind with this MPC and the KK M32.

Complaining about rappers rapping about rapping is like complaining about rockers singing about rocking.

Not only does the latter seem valid to me but rockers themselves have done this much less since the 80s. I think it would seem weird if Thom Yorke or Win Butler sang something like "Rock You Like a Hurricane".

Also rappers rapping about rapping sounds p “l’art pour l’art” to me and not some sinister mandated social realism

Karma police
arrest this man
he cannot rock like us

plenty of genres and subgenres started out of not hearing the things you want in music that's around.

Not quite the same thing, but I'm reminded of this Walter Benjamin quip:

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Also rappers rapping about rapping sounds p “l’art pour l’art” to me and not some sinister mandated social realism

Insofar as autotelism is widely regarded as one of the pillars of art for art's sake, mos def.

xxxp Rapping about rap really got overdone as a reaction to more social realist rap

I'm a creep
I'm a virtuoso
I rock you from ear to ear
But I don't belong here

god i wish Radiohead just did Scorpions covers

Thought I was in the what's the most melodramatic pop song?' thread for a second.

The Bends is mostly Scorpions covers iirc

I can feel death, can see its beady eyes

Bona fide bragging.

This thread is like going into the spam cafe and asking for something that doesn’t have spam in it

Tbf to OP hip-hop's signature sound was built on decontextualization and recontextualization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE2xRCG2ih0

there's been plenty offered up that fits the bill, op hasn't even dismissed all of it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PsnxDQvQpw

can i get some dance music that isn't danceable?

oh yeah i can, i see there are hundreds of ILM threads about exactly that

strange that asking for rap that doesn't rap is somehow more controversial than asking for dance that doesn't dance or rock that doesn't rock

rockers rocking about rocking (post 50s) is the most insufferable "mode" of rock, it's always bad, critically rehabilitated hard rock included

rappers rapping about rapping probably includes a lot of the best and worst rap though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dytxv6XPa3E

I will admit there are times I want to listen to, say, Slayer, or Sabbath, but I don't feel like hearing the stupid (proto or no) metal-trope lyrics. There are other times I do.

The suggestion that I listen to hip-hop in a language I don’t understand does seem like an honest attempt to answer my request in the OP, so thanks. But the problem here is that one of my biggest hobbies is language-learning, so I probably would not be oblivious to the lyrics for long.

troll

fuck this troll, especially today

― here 1st (roxymuzak), Sunday, May 31, 2020 7:58 AM (four hours ago)

otm, fuck off